EXCLUSIVE Insiders reveal the truth about Liam Neeson's relationship with Pamela Anderson
And Liam Neeson has done little to temper talk of a real life romance with his costar Pamela Anderson, leaving fans clamoring to know more after announcing he was 'madly in love' with the former Baywatch babe earlier this year.
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The Guardian
11 minutes ago
- The Guardian
‘Generations of women have been disfigured': Jamie Lee Curtis lets rip on plastic surgery, power, and Hollywood's age problem
I'm scheduled to speak to Jamie Lee Curtis at 2pm UK time, and a few minutes before the allotted slot I dial in via video link, to be met with a vision of the 66-year-old actor sitting alone in a darkened room, staring impassively into the camera. 'Morning,' she says, with comic flatness, as I make a sound of surprise that is definitely not a little scream. Oh, hi!! I say, Are you early or am I late? 'I'm always early,' says the actor, deadpan. 'Or as my elder daughter refers to me, 'aggressively early'.' Curtis is in a plain black top, heavy black-framed glasses and – importantly for this conversation – little or no makeup, while behind her in the gloom, a dog sleeps in a basket. She won't say what part of the US she's in beyond the fact it's a 'witness protection cabin in the woods' where 'I'm trying to have privacy' – an arch way, I assume, of saying she's not in LA – and immediately starts itemising other situations in which she has been known to be early: Hollywood premieres ('They tell me I can't go to the red carpet yet because it's not open and so my driver, Cal, and I drive around and park in the shade'); early-morning text messages ('I wake people up'); even her work schedule: 'I show up, do the work, and then I get the fuck out.' This is the short version; in full, the opening minutes of our conversation involve Curtis free-associating through references to the memory of her mother and stepfather missing her performance in a school musical in Connecticut; the negotiating aims of the makeup artists' union; the nickname by which she would like to be known if she ever becomes a grandmother ('Fifo' – short for 'first in first out'); and what, exactly, her earliness is about. Not, as you might imagine, anxiety, but: 'You know, honestly, I've done enough analysis of all this – it's control.' Curtis knows her early arrivals strike some people as rude. 'My daughter Annie says: 'People aren't ready for you.' And I basically say: 'Well, that's their problem. They should be ready.'' 'That's their problem' is, along with, 'I don't give a shit any more' a classic Curtis expression that goes a long way towards explaining why so many people love her – and they really do love her – a woman who on top of charming us for decades in a clutch of iconic roles, has crossed over, lately, into that paradoxical territory in which she is loved precisely because she's done worrying about what others think of her. Specifically, she doesn't care about the orthodoxies of an industry in which women are shamed into having cosmetic surgery before they hit 30. Curtis has spoken of having a procedure herself at 25, following a comment made on the set of a film that her eyes were 'baggy'. Regretting it, she has in the years since made the genuinely outlandish and inspiring decision to wear her hair grey and eschew surgical tweaks. That Curtis is the child of two Hollywood icons, Tony Curtis and Janet Leigh, and thus an insider since birth, either makes this more surprising or else explains it entirely, but either way, she has become someone who appears to operate outside the usual Hollywood rules. 'I have become quite brusque,' says Curtis, of people making demands on her time when she's not open for business. 'And I have no problem saying: 'Back the fuck off.'' I can believe it. During the course of our conversation, Curtis's attitude – which is broadly charming, occasionally hectoring and appears to be driven by a general and sardonic belligerence – is that of someone pushing back against a lifetime of misconceptions, from which, four months shy of her 67th birthday, she finally feels herself to be free. Curtis is in a glorious phase of her career, one that, despite starring in huge hits – from the Halloween franchise and A Fish Called Wanda (1988) to Trading Places (1983), True Lies (1994) and the superlative Knives Out (2019) – has always eluded her. The fact is, celebrity aside, Curtis has never been considered a particularly heavyweight actor or been A-list in the conventional way. At its most trivial, this has required her to weather small slights, such as being ignored by the Women In Film community, with its tedious schedule of panels and events. ('I still exist outside of Women In Film,' she snaps. 'They're not asking me to their lunch.') And, more broadly, has seen Curtis completely overlooked by the Oscars since she shot Halloween, her first movie, at the age of 19. Well, all that has changed now. In 2023, Curtis won an Oscar for best supporting actress for her role as Deirdre Beaubeirdre in the genre-bending movie Everything Everywhere All at Once. That same year, she appeared in a single episode of the multi-award-winning TV show The Bear as Donna Berzatto, the alcoholic mother of a large Italian clan – she calls it 'the most exhilarating creative experience I will ever have'. Anyone who saw this extraordinary performance is still talking about it, and it led to a larger role on the show. Doors that had always been shut to Curtis flew open. For years, she had tried and failed to get movie and TV projects off the ground. Now, she lists the forthcoming projects she had a hand in bringing to the screen: 'Freakier Friday, TV series Scarpetta, survival movie The Lost Bus, four other TV shows and two other movies.' She has become a 'prolific producer', she says, as well as a Hollywood elder and role model. All of which makes Curtis laugh – the fact that, finally, 'at 66, I get to be a boss'. You'd better believe she'll be making the most of it. The movie Curtis and I are ostensibly here to talk about is Freakier Friday, the follow-up to Freaky Friday, the monster Disney hit of 2003 in which Curtis and Lindsay Lohan appeared as a mother and daughter who switch bodies with hilarious consequences. I defy anyone who enjoyed the first film not to feel both infinitely aged by revisiting the cast more than 20 years on, and also not to find it a wildly enjoyable return. The teenage Lohan of the first movie is now a 37-year-old mother of 15-year-old Harper, played by Julia Butters, while the introduction of a second teenager – Harper's mortal enemy Lily, played by Sophia Hammons – allows for a four-way body swap in which Curtis-as-grandma is inhabited by Hammons' British wannabe influencer. If it lacks the simplicity of the first movie, I thoroughly enjoyed it and look forward to taking my 10-year-old girls when it opens next month. It is also a movie that presented Curtis with an odd set of challenges. She has a problem with 'pretty'. When Curtis herself was a teenager, she says, she was 'cute but not pretty'. She watched both her parents' careers atrophy after their youthful good looks started to wane. Part of her shtick around earliness is an almost existential refusal to live on Hollywood's timeline, because, she says: 'I witnessed my parents lose the very thing that gave them their fame and their life and their livelihood, when the industry rejected them at a certain age. I watched them reach incredible success and then have it slowly erode to where it was gone. And that's very painful.' As a result, says Curtis: 'I have been self-retiring for 30 years. I have been prepping to get out, so that I don't have to suffer the same as my family did. I want to leave the party before I'm no longer invited.' In the movie, Curtis was allowed to keep her grey hair (although it looks shot through with blond) but her trademark pixie cut was replaced with something longer and softer. I take it with a pinch when she says things such as, 'I'm an old lady' and, 'I'm going to die soon' – even in age-hating Hollywood, this seems overegged – but one takes the point that she found the conventional aesthetic demands of Freakier Friday, in which she 'had to look pretty, I had to pay attention to [flattering] lighting, and clothes and hair and makeup and nails', much harder than playing a dishevelled alcoholic in The Bear. On the other hand, Curtis is a pro and, of course, gave Disney the full-throated, zany-but-still-kinda-hot grandma they wanted. (There is a scene in which she tries to explain various board games – Boggle, Parcheesi – to the owl-eyed teens that reminds you just how fine a comic actor she is.) It's the story of how Freakier Friday came about, however, that really gives insight into who Curtis is: an absolute, indefatigable and inveterate hustler. 'I am owning my hustle, now,' she says and is at her most impressive, her most charming and energised when she is talking about the hustle. To wit: Curtis was on a world tour promoting the Halloween franchise that made her name and that enjoyed a hugely successful reboot in 2018, when something about the crowd response struck her. 'In every single city I went to, the only movie they asked me about besides Halloween was Freaky Friday – was there going to be a sequel?' When she got back from the tour, she called Bob Iger, Disney's CEO. 'I said: 'Look, I don't know if you're planning on doing [a sequel], but Lindsay is old enough to have a teenager now, and I'm telling you the market for that movie exists.'' As the project came together, Curtis learned that Disney was planning to release Freakier Friday straight to streaming. 'And I called Bob Iger' – it's at this point you start to imagine Iger seeing Curtis's name flash up on his phone and experiencing a slight drop in spirits – 'and I called David Greenbaum [Disney Live Action president], and I called Asad Ayaz, who's the head of marketing, and I said: 'Guys, I have one word for you: Barbie. If you don't think the audience that saw Barbie is going to be the audience that goes and sees Freakier Friday, you're wrong.'' This is what Curtis means when she refers to herself as 'a marketing person', or 'a weapon of mass promotion', and she has done it for ever. It's what she did in 2002 when she lobbied More magazine to let her pose in her underwear and no makeup – 'They didn't come to me and say: 'Hey Jamie, how about you take off your clothes and show America that you're chubby?' The More magazine thing happened because I said it should happen, and I even titled the piece: True Thighs.' And it is what she was doing a few weeks before our interview when she turned up to the photoshoot in LA bearing a bunch of props she had ordered from Amazon, including oversized plastic lips and a blond wig. Curtis says: 'There are many, many actresses who love the dress up, who love clothes, who love fashion, who love being a model. I. Hate. It. I feel like I am having to wrestle with your idea of me versus my idea of me. Because I've worked hard to establish who I am, and I don't want you to … I have struggled with it my whole life.' Curtis is emphatic that her ideas be accurately interpreted and, before our meeting, sent an email via her publicist explaining her thinking behind the shoot. 'The wax lips is my statement against plastic surgery. I've been very vocal about the genocide of a generation of women by the cosmeceutical industrial complex, who've disfigured themselves. The wax lips really sends it home.' Obviously, the word 'genocide' is very strong and risks causing offence, given its proper meaning. To Curtis, however, it is accurate. 'I've used that word for a long time and I use it specifically because it's a strong word. I believe that we have wiped out a generation or two of natural human [appearance]. The concept that you can alter the way you look through chemicals, surgical procedures, fillers – there's a disfigurement of generations of predominantly women who are altering their appearances. And it is aided and abetted by AI, because now the filter face is what people want. I'm not filtered right now. The minute I lay a filter on and you see the before and after, it's hard not to go: 'Oh, well that looks better.' But what's better? Better is fake. And there are too many examples – I will not name them – but very recently we have had a big onslaught through media, many of those people.' Well, at the risk of sounding harsh, one of the people implicated by Curtis's criticism is Lindsay Lohan, her Freakier Friday co-star and a woman in her late 30s who has seemingly had a lot of cosmetic procedures at a startlingly young age (though Lohan denies having had surgery). In terms of mentoring Lohan, with whom Curtis remained friends after making the first film, she says: 'I'm bossy, very bossy, but I try to mind my own business. She doesn't need my advice. She's a fully functioning, smart woman, creative person. Privately, she's asked me questions, but nothing that's more than an older friend you might ask.' But given the stridency of Curtis's position on cosmetic surgery, don't younger women feel judged in her presence? Isn't it awkward? 'No. No. Because I don't care. It doesn't matter. I'm not proselytising to them. I would never say a word. I would never say to someone: what have you done? All I know is that it is a never-ending cycle. That, I know. Once you start, you can't stop. But it's not my job to give my opinion; it's none of my business.' As for Lohan, Curtis says: 'I felt tremendous maternal care for Lindsay after the first movie, and continued to feel that. When she'd come to LA, I would see her. She and I have remained friends, and now we're sort of colleagues. I feel less maternal towards her because she's a mommy now herself and doesn't need my maternal care, and has, obviously, a mom – Dina's a terrific grandma.' Sign up to Inside Saturday The only way to get a look behind the scenes of the Saturday magazine. Sign up to get the inside story from our top writers as well as all the must-read articles and columns, delivered to your inbox every weekend. after newsletter promotion The general point about the horror of trying to stay young via surgery is sensible and, of course, I agree. At the back of my mind, however, I have a small, pinging reservation that I can't quite put my finger on. I suggest to Curtis that she has natural advantages by virtue of being a movie star, which, on the one hand, of course, makes her more vulnerable around issues of ageing, but on the other hand, she's naturally beautiful and everyone loves her, and most average women who – 'I have short grey hair!' she protests. 'Other women can –' They can, of course! But you must have a physical confidence that falls outside the normal – 'No! No!' She won't have it. 'I feel like you're trying to say: 'You're in some rarefied air, Jamie.'' I'm not! She responds: 'By the way, genetics – you can't fuck with genetics. You want to know where my genetics lie?' She lifts up an arm and wobbles her bingo wings at me. 'Are you kidding me? By the way, you're not going to see a picture of me in a tank top, ever.' This is Curtis's red line. 'I wear long-sleeve shirts; that's just common sense.' She gives me a beady look. 'I challenge you that I'm in some rarefied air.' I think about this afterwards to try and clarify my objection, which I guess is this: that the main reason women in middle age dye their hair is to stave off invisibility, which, with the greatest respect, is not among the veteran movie star's problems. But it's a minor quibble given what I genuinely believe is Curtis's helpful and iconoclastic gesture. And when she talks about cosmetic surgery as addiction, she should know. Curtis was an alcoholic until she got sober at 40 and is emphatic and impressive on this subject, the current poster woman – literally: she's on signs across LA for an addiction charity with the tagline: 'My bravest thing? Getting sober'. I'm curious about how her intense need for control worked, in those years long ago, alongside her addiction? 'I am a controlled addict,' she says. 'In recovery we talk about how, in order to start recovering, you have to hit what you call a 'bottom'. You have to crash and burn, lose yourself and your family and your job and your resources in order to know that the way you were living didn't work. I refer to myself as an Everest bottom; I am the highest bottom I know. When I acknowledged my lack of control, I was in a very controlled state. I lost none of the external aspects of my life. The only thing I had lost was my own sense of myself and self-esteem.' Externally, during those years of addiction, she seemed to be doing very well. Her career boomed. She married Christopher Guest, the actor, screenwriter and director, and they have two children and have stayed married for more than 40 years. (There's no miracle to this. As Curtis puts it, wryly: 'It's just that we have chosen to stay married. And be married people. And we love each other. And I believe we respect each other. And I'm sure there's a little bit of hatred in there, too.') I wonder, then, whether Curtis's success during those years disguised how serious a situation she was in with her addiction? 'There's no one way to be an addict or an alcoholic. People hide things – I was lucky, and I am ambitious, and so I never let that self-medication get in the way of my ambition or work or creativity. It never bled through. No one would ever have said that had been an issue for me.' Where was the cost? 'The external costs are awful for people; but the internal costs are more sinister and deadly, because to understand that you are powerless over something other than your own mind and creativity is something. But that was a long time ago. I'm an old lady now.' She is doing better than ever. With the Oscar under her belt, Curtis has just returned in the new season of The Bear and has a slew of projects – many developed with Jason Blum, the veteran horror producer with whom she has a development deal – coming down the line. Watching her bravura performance as Donna Berzatto, I did wonder if playing an alcoholic had been in any way traumatic. She flashes me a look of pure vehemence. 'Here's what's traumatic: not being able to express your range as an artist. That's traumatic. To spend your entire public life holding back range. And depth. And complexity. And contradiction. And rage. And pain. And sorrow.' She builds momentum: 'And to have been limited to a much smaller palette of creative, emotional work. 'For me, it was an unleashing of 50 years of being a performer who was never considered to have any range. And so the freedom, and the confidence, that I was given by Chris [Storer, the show's creator], and the writing, which leads you … everywhere you need to go – it was exhilarating.' She continues: 'It took no toll. The toll has been 40 years of holding back something I know is here.' Well, there she is, the Curtis who thrills and inspires. Among the many new projects is The Lost Bus, a survival disaster movie for AppleTV+ about a bus full of children trying to escape wildfires. The idea came to Curtis while she was driving on the freeway, listening to an NPR report on the deadly wildfires of 2018 in the small town of Paradise, California. She pulled over and called Blum; the movie, directed by Paul Greengrass and starring Matthew McConaughey and America Ferrera, drops later this year. For another project, she managed to persuade Patricia Cornwell, the superstar thriller writer, to release the rights for her Scarpetta series, which, as well as producing, Curtis will star in alongside Nicole Kidman. This burst of activity is something Curtis ascribes to the 'freedom' she derived from losing 'all vanity', and over the course of our conversation 'freedom' is the word she most frequently uses to describe what she values in life. Freedom is a particularly loaded and precious concept for those on the other side of addiction and, says Curtis, 'I have dead relatives; I have parents who both had issues with drinking and drugs. I have a dead sibling. I have numerous friends who never found the freedom, which is really the goal – right? Freedom.' It's a principle that also extends to her family. Curtis's daughter Ruby, 29, is trans, and I ask how insulated they are from Donald Trump's aggressively anti-trans policies. 'I want to be careful because I protect my family,' says Curtis. 'I'm an outspoken advocate for the right of human beings to be who they are. And if a governmental organisation tries to claim they're not allowed to be who they are, I will fight against that. I'm a John Steinbeck student – he's my favourite writer – and there's a beautiful piece of writing from East of Eden about the freedom of people to be who they are. Any government, religion, institution trying to limit that freedom is what I need to fight against.' There are many, many other subjects to cycle through, including Curtis's friendship with Mariska Hargitay, whose new documentary about her mother, Jayne Mansfield, hit Curtis particularly hard, not least because 'Jayne's house was next to Tony Curtis's house – that big pink house on Carolwood Drive that Tony Curtis lived in and Sonny and Cher owned prior to him.' (I don't know if referring to her dad as 'Tony Curtis,' is intended to charm, but it does.) There's also a school reunion she went to over a decade ago; the feeling she has of being 'a 14-year-old energy bunny'; the fact we've been pronouncing 'Everest' wrong all this time; the role played by lyrics from Justin Timberlake's Like I Love You in her friendship with Lindsay Lohan; and the 'Gordian knot' of what happens when not being a brand becomes your brand. Curtis could, one suspects, summon an infinite stream of enthusiasms and – perhaps no better advertisement for ageing, this – share urgent thoughts about every last one of them. In an industry in which people weigh their words, veil their opinions and pander to every passing ideal, she has gone in a different direction, one unrestrained by the usual timidities. Or as she puts it with her typical take-it-or-leave-it flatness, 'the freedom to have my own mind, wherever it's going to take me. I'm comfortable with that journey and reject the rest.' Freakier Friday is in Australian cinemas from 7 August and from 8 August in the UK and US Jamie Lee Curtis wears: (leopard look) jacket and skirt, by Rixo; T-shirt and belt, both by AllSaints; boots, by Dr Martens; tights, by Wolford; (tartan look) suit, by Vivienne Westwood, from tights, by Wolford; shoes, by By Far. Fashion stylist: Avigail Collins at Forward Artists. Set stylist: Stefania Lucchesi at Saint Luke Artists. Hair: Sean James at Aim Artists. Makeup: Erin Ayanian Monroe at Cloutier Remix.
The Guardian
11 minutes ago
- The Guardian
TV tonight: Raquel Welch's son and showbiz friends tell her real story
9pm, Sky Documentaries Raquel Welch was a single mother with two small kids when she pulled up in Hollywood. She is best known as the biggest sex symbol of the era but this celebratory film whizzes through her life to tell her full story: from feeling pressure to hide her Latina roots to that famous fur-bikini poster, her complicated relationship with feminism, two Golden Globe wins and suing MGM for $10m for replacing her with a younger actor. Her son and showbiz friends share their memories. Hollie Richardson 6.20pm, BBC One Get ready to shout answers at the telly as Marvin and Rochelle Humes guide another three teams through the fun and fizzy pop quiz. Only the fastest duo will make it to the Chart Rundown round, where naming 10 bangers in quick succession could win them £10,000. Graeme Virtue 6.30pm, Channel 4 Will the Yorkshire Shepherdess, Amanda Owen, and her family manage to turn their abandoned farmhouse into a 21st-century home? We're now into the second series of their attempt, with separated husband Clive being laid low by a hip operation and the process being extended by planning permission to make the house bigger just having been granted. Alexi Duggins 8pm, Channel 5 If you've ever been interested in the Princess Royal's equestrian career, well … here's a whole 90 minutes dedicated to telling you all about it. She once competed in the Olympics – the first royal to do so! – and is the president of the Riding for the Disabled Association. HR 9pm, ITV2 Having spent the summer narrating both the US and UK versions of Love Island, Iain Stirling is surely due a break of his own. It's not quite time for a Jet2 holiday yet, though – there's still one more week of contractually obligated fun in the sun, starting with this compilation. Hannah J Davies Midnight, ITV1 The cat-and-mouse thriller about a random group of strangers being framed for a violent kidnapping continues. There are potential answers in New York but can the amateur fugitives keep it together long enough to escape the UK? The fact that their plan requires reliable train wifi does not bode well. Graeme Virtue Rumours, 1.15pm, 10.15pm, Sky Cinema Premiere A few weeks ago, Prime Video gave us Heads of State. A rollicking, deliberately dumb action movie about the US president and the British prime minister, Heads of State looked as if it was going to be the weirdest political film of the year. Turns out it wasn't even the weirdest of the summer, because here is Rumours. With three writer-directors, including Guy Maddin, it's a film about a G7 summit that finds itself being terrorised by marauding bog-zombies and, odder still, a giant brain. The fact that Cate Blanchett plays the German chancellor and Charles Dance the US president makes it stranger still. Highly silly and very funny, it's not something you are likely to forget in a hurry. Stuart Heritage Lyle, Lyle, Crocodile, 2pm, BBC One Last year's vaguely nightmarish Harold and the Purple Crayon is an example of the pitfalls of attempting to stretch a children's picture book to feature length. With that in mind, 2022's Lyle, Lyle, Crocodile is a miracle. Based on a slight 1965 kids' book, Will Speck and Josh Gordon's film is an unexpected delight. There is a crocodile, he can sing, and all hell breaks loose. Not only are the songs (by The Greatest Showman's Benj Pasek and Justin Paul) genuinely good, but Javier Bardem gives one of the performances of his life as Lyle's unreliable owner. SH Fallen Leaves, 9.45pm, BBC Four As is to be expected – nay required – from the master of dour, deadpan humour, in Aki Kaurismäki's latest romantic comedy his two lonely, Helsinki-based central characters struggle to express their feelings. The potential match of Ansa (Alma Pöysti) and Holappa (Jussi Vatanen) is further stymied by him losing her number, his struggles with alcoholism and their shared inability to hold on to a job. Not a laugh-a-minute plot description, admittedly, but being immersed in the director's peculiarly Finnish world makes you wish the pair the best of an imperfect life. Simon Wardell International Rugby Union: Australia v British & Irish Lions, 9.30am, Sky Sports Main Event The second Test at the MCG. Test Cricket: England v India, 10.15am, Sky Sports Cricket Day four of the fourth Test at Old Trafford in Manchester. Cycling: Tour de France, 10.45am, TNT Sports 1/1pm, ITV4 The penultimate stage of the men's race, a 184.2km route from Nantua to Pontarlier. Cycling: Tour de France Femmes, 4pm, TNT Sports 1 Stage one, 78.8km from Vannes to Plumelec, with Giro winner Elisa Longo Borghini among the favourites. World Matchplay Darts, 7.30pm, Sky Sports Main Event The semi-finals at the Winter Gardens in Blackpool.
The Independent
an hour ago
- The Independent
Alec Baldwin talks his love for 'Peanuts' and the 'immeasurable' effects of his trial
Alec Baldwin says the year since his trial suddenly ended with a dismissal has been far better than the few years that preceded it, and the affect that time has had on him has been 'immeasurable.' 'Something as powerful as that happens in your life, you don't know how much it changes you,' he said. 'I can't even tell you how different I am from three-and-a-half years ago. And what I want and what I don't want, and how I want to live my life and not live my life.' The 67-year-old actor spoke to The Associated Press at San Diego's Comic-Con International, where he was part of a panel on 75 years of Charles Schulz 's 'Peanuts,' whose simplicity, existential philosophy and moral outlook have been very much on his mind. Baldwin spoke while a suited Snoopy character stood nearby after posing for photos with him. In a foreword Baldwin wrote for 'The Complete Peanuts 1977-1978,' he said while reading Schulz's newspaper comic strip every day as a child, he realized Charlie Brown, more than anyone, wanted the things he wanted. Chief among those wants are 'the desire to have friends and the desire to hold your friends close to you.' That hasn't changed in the years since. 'Come on, what man my age doesn't relate to Charlie Brown? If Charlie Brown was 67 years old, he'd be me, but he wouldn't have been stupid enough to have seven (small) children,' he said with a laugh. But he aspires to the qualities of a different character. ' Lucy. I want to be Lucy. Lucy is in charge. She's got it all figured out,' he said. 'She pauses for a moment of self-awareness, but not too long.' Baldwin said he admired Schulz's simple line drawings combined with the real circumstances of the characters, embodied by real children's voices when the animated holiday specials emerged in his childhood. 'It's so complicated and simple at the same time, which is what I think makes it beautiful,' he said. And he admired Schulz's willingness to embrace melancholy, and deeper darknesses, in stories about inner struggle that needed no villains. 'A dog sitting on top of a dog house would have the same impact on you as, like, Nietzsche, he said,' looking across the room at Snoopy. 'They should have named the dog Nietzsche.' Baldwin's career has had several distinct phases. Early on he played tough husbands and boyfriends in supporting roles including 'Married to the Mob' and 'Working Girl.' He moved on to heroic leading man in 'The Hunt for Red October' and 'The Shadow.' Downshifting to memorable character parts, he showed his gift for manly speeches in 'Glengarry Glen Ross' and 'The Departed,' and his comedy prowess in seven seasons of '30 Rock' and as a constant host and guest on 'Saturday Night Live.' In July 2024 his trial in New Mexico on an involuntary manslaughter charge in the 2021 shooting death of cinematographer Halyna Hutchins on the set of the Western 'Rust' fell apart halfway through. A judge dismissed the case on allegations authorities withheld evidence. 'I can't believe that happened on that day the way it happened,' he said. 'And it couldn't have been better for us in certain terms because of the malice and so forth and everything that's embodied in that whole situation.' The next phase is uncertain. He says he's 'just trying to move forward with my wife and my family.' He and wife Hilaria and their seven small kids recently appeared on the TLC reality series 'The Baldwins.' He says he has successfully sold his young ones on 'Peanuts,' especially the Halloween and Christmas specials, as he did with his now nearly 30-year-old daughter Ireland when she was young. He notices their personalities zig-zagging between the traits of Schulz's characters. 'They're Charlie Brown, now they're Snoopy, now they're Schroeder, now they're Linus, now they're Pig-Pen,' he said. 'They're Pig-Pen most of the time, I must say.' And their house is full of themed toys. He keeps a small Snoopy figure among the things in his office, a reminder to try to maintain 'love, kindness, patience.' "Peanuts are still kind of like, in that zone," he said. 'Let's just try to be good people.'
